Kerby Anderson
Are humans the enemy? Should animals have constitutional rights? Should peas be granted personhood? These questions may sound ludicrous. Nevertheless, professors and leaders in environmental rights groups are asking these questions and providing bizarre answers.
Wesley J. Smith was on Point of View radio talk show to discuss his documentary “The War on Humans.” You can watch it on YouTube and also order the companion e-book. You will quickly see or read that these questions are not satire or science fiction. There are people who believe that humans are the problem, and the only solution is to grant legal rights to animals and plants. Some go so far as to suggest that we find some way to reduce the human population by 90 percent.
Smith documents these claims in his video and e-book. Anti-human activists want to place all our valuable natural resources (from oil to land) off limits for human use. Farmers could be held liable for plowing new fields because it might lead to the death of rodents, snakes, and even weeds.
These ideas do not spring from the biblical concept of having dominion over the earth and being a good steward of God’s creation. Instead, the environmental movement of the 1960s portrays humans as a “disease” or as “parasites” or as a “cancer” hurting Mother Nature. It then evolved into the “nature rights” movement that desires to give fauna and flora “the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles.” We end up with a pantheistic idea that eliminates any distinction between humans and other life forms.
These ideas don’t just surface in academic settings or environmental rallies. They end up in our laws. That is why we need to counter these erroneous ideas and defend the biblical principle of human dignity.